Two-dimensional legislative conflict: unique implications for the effectiveness of local councils

Author ORCID Identifier

Meng Yuan:https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9706-3814

Scot Schraufnagel:https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5488-3070

Publication Title

Local Government Studies

ISSN

03003930

E-ISSN

44076

Document Type

Article

Abstract

Organisational scholars argue there are two distinct types of conflict found in the private-sector workplace. One is referred to as task conflict and the other relational conflict. We use their insights to devise our own measures of conflict on local elected councils. As opposed to ‘task conflict’ we use the term ‘policy conflict’ and keep the same nomenclature ‘relational conflict.’ We will contend it is important to not conflate the two. In this work, we test our unique operationalisations of conflict on an established measure of Governing Board Effectiveness. Because of concerns over using the same survey instrument to measure both explanatory variables and the dependent variable we also test our thesis regarding two-dimensional legislative conflict on entirely exogenous measures of ‘healthy cities.’ We find that higher levels of policy conflict comport with good governance outcomes, while relational conflict provides no measurable benefit.

First Page

780

Last Page

799

Publication Date

9-2-2020

DOI

10.1080/03003930.2019.1667773

Keywords

Legislative conflict, local councils, policy conflict, relational conflict

Department

Department of Political Science

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